The Power Of Questions

Did you know that only one third of wineries with organic certification label their bottles with any mention of it (Frogs Leap is one example)? One of the main reasons they don’t promote this is because consumers aren’t asking for it.

We started Centralas because your choices as a consumer have the power to change the world. The many small daily decisions that you make about what to drink and eat, multiplied by the number of days in your life, equals a huge influence on how that food and drink was produced and distributed.

But you have another power as a consumer, and it has the potential to be much more viral.

You have the power to ask questions.

When you ask your favorite wine-seller, “Do you have wine that was made with organically grown grapes?” you exert influence in several ways.

1. Questions grease the wheels of change.

The market provides what you ask of it. If you don’t ask for it, why would the market change?

Asking the question sends ripples of information up the supply chain.

“We’ve been getting a lot of requests for wine made from organic grapes,” gets telegraphed from the salesperson on the floor to their manager, to the buyer, to the distributor, to the producer.

If enough of these signals are sent over time, change happens.

2. You are asking your wine-seller to know about this aspect of their inventory.

You may be surprised how many people that sell wine don’t know what “organic” or “biodynamic” or “sustainable” actually means for wine. (Did you know that certified “sustainable” wines can still be grown with hazardous chemicals?).

Get your wine-seller engaged in being knowledgeable about these certifications, and their importance to the world. Your question will help them be prepared for the next person who asks.

It helps if you know a bit about what each of these things means, so that you won’t be misled by an unscrupulous, or over-zealous, salesperson. But even if you’re still confused by all the terminology, don’t let that deter you.

Here’s a great rule of thumb: if it doesn’t say it anywhere on the bottle (or can or box), pull out your phone and search the winery. If the winery website has descriptions of their vineyards and doesn’t mention organic or biodynamic – it probably isn’t.

3. You show that you care.

It’s a statement that you aren’t just an alcoholic looking for a buzz. You think of wine as an agricultural and cultural product that impacts our environment and our world. You aren’t just a mindless consumer dazzled by pretty labels and clever marketing. You want substance.

This is a cultural shift. This is the big difference between where we are now, in America, and where we need to be to stop the precipitous decline in our health. Mindless consumption has been the norm, and the supply chain has been built around it.

Questions are the only ways to find out the story and values behind the wine. Big Scores can’t tell you that. Staff Picks can’t tell you that. Big Discounts can’t tell you that.

Questions open the door to new ways of thinking about wine, and everything.

I know that, thanks to COVID, a lot of us have started buying our wine online. We now don’t get the opportunity to ask these questions in person.

So try emailing the retailer. Or ask the questions of the internet. The algorithms need to know you care too.

I know all of this seems like a lot of work to get a nice bottle of wine, and it can be.

But it’s only a lot of work now, because not enough of us have been asking the questions. We’re getting something moving that has a lot of stagnant inertia.

But you’ll see. The more you ask the questions, the easier it will get.

The power of questions is like a winch, slowly turning, pulling wine inch-by-inch out of the chemically polluted mud in which it has been stuck for decades.